Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

130 Open Borders
yet again, claimed to have ‘recognised’ him, this time carrying a ‘heavy
weight bar’, although he had mentioned him in none of his three police
statements), and a 17-year-old defendant had collapsed in uncontrollable
sobs. The judge then directed the jury to give a verdict of Not Guilty, which
it did with apparent relish. The jury consisted of eight white men and four
women. None of them looked as though they might remotely belong to what
Mike O’Brien on Radio 4 castigated as ‘the extremist liberal chattering
classes’ who oppose Campsfield. Group 4’s behaviour during the trial caused
the jury to laugh in disbelief. After the trial collapsed, some of them spoke to
protesters outside the court. One said quietly: ‘Who should have been on trial
was Group 4, not them.’
The court heard Chief Immigration Officer John Graham and 16 Group 4
witnesses, including Centre Manager John Jasper. These, the prosecution
told the court, were all except two of the eye witnesses to be called. The
prosecution had little video evidence it could use. Defence lawyers, in turn,
had no need to produce any wider political defence. One by one, the witnesses
were demolished. Over and over again, they admitted they might have been
wrong or that they had told lies (an ‘undeliberate lie’, said one of them).
Repeatedly they claimed to have ‘recognised’ defendants whom they had
previously mentioned in none of their statements. Asked how they
recognised them, they said it was through meal duties, or playing sports.
‘Playing sports?’ asked one defence lawyer. ‘Yes.’ ‘Playing football?’ ‘Yes.’
‘But my client never plays football, or any sport.’ John Graham, the senior
immigration official at Campsfield, claimed in his statement to the police to
have ‘recognised’ at an incident the previous evening two of the defendants
and one of the two detainees who were removed, and to have known them
‘from my work at the centre’. In court he said, instead, that he had asked
Group 4 for the names of ‘the three most vociferous’. He said he ‘could not
understand his mistake’, and also that he thought he had ordered the
removal of one of the defendants. Tim Allen, former supervisor, who claimed
to have been hit with a dumb-bell by one of the defendants, was shown a
video by defence lawyer David Bright. He acknowledged that the defendant
would have had to be on the film if he had indeed hit him, picked out a
detainee on the film and then had to admit it was not the defendant, yet
continued to maintain that he knew the defendant had hit him.
Witnesses repeatedly contradicted themselves. John Jasper, Group 4
manager, who said he was previously a chief superintendent in the West
Midlands police force, was asked about notices recommending respect for
detainees and avoidance of racial abuse. He said they were displayed in
corridors but was unable to say where, and finally admitted that he did not
know of any that were visible to detainees. Jane Essery told the prosecution
she felt ‘fearful’ and ‘panicky’. Henry Blaxland produced the transcript of a
statement she had made to Group 4 management in which she said: ‘I felt
very calm, actually.’ Her response was that she had ‘never heard that tape;
I never heard it would be used in evidence.’